Cut your electric bill

Reduce Dryer Cost

by Alina Sandor

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During the winter your energy bill can skyrocket. The cash conscious person uses a clothesline in the summer to combat high electric bills, but what can you do when snow is on the ground and the wind can whip your clothes into the neighbor's yard?

Saving on your electric bill by giving the dryer a boot can be just as easy in the winter as in the summer. You just have to be a little more creative.

Hanging' Out in the Laundry Room

The easiest and simplest way to bring back the days of clothesline dried clothes is to make your own in your laundry room. This can work even if you just have your washer and dryer in a small closet.

If you have two walls that are somewhat close together, you can put up a tension rod (the kind you use to put up a shower curtain) to hang clothes on. Hang knit shirts on padded hangers, woven shirts on plastic hangers and socks and undies on hangers made for baby clothes or to hang skirts. To hang pants, simply button the waist around the "shoulders" of a plastic hanger. If the pants are too large to stay on the hanger, clip them with a clothes pin on each side.

If you don't have two walls that are very close, you can make a "real" clothesline in no time. Take some clothesline (you can get this for around a dollar) and string it between two large eyehooks placed on each wall. Make sure that the eyehooks are well anchored to hold heavier clothes.

If you have central heating, then you have dryers all over the house. More than likely your bathroom gets particularly warm if you keep the door closed, so why not use all that wasted heat on something resourceful?

Move your towel bars or hooks so that they are over the heater vents. This way, when you do a load of towels, they go right back to where you need them and dry themselves.

Also, at night, hang jeans and other harder to dry items on the shower rod. They will be dry by morning.

Skip A Step, Save Time and Money

If you have enough on your plate and think that you can't waste time making a clothesline or moving your towel bars, don't throw the clothes in the dryer just yet. Why not save time and money at the same time?

To do this, just skip a step in your daily laundry routine. That's right, just skip drying your clothes all together. Okay, it sounds crazy, but it really works.

Keep a basket of hangers by your washer and as soon as you take clothes out of the washer put them on hangers. Then, hang them in the closet as usual.

The only catch is to make sure that you leave the closet door open and enough space between clothes so that air can circulate between them. It will take about a day for the clothes to dry. If you try this trick, make sure your have other things to wear in the meantime.

With these tips, and some you're sure to think of while trying these tips, your power bill will be at an all time low. Who says you can't dry your clothes and save money too?

"The Dollar Stretcher, Inc." does not assume responsibility for advice given. All advice should be weighed against your own abilities and circumstances and applied accordingly. It is up to the reader to determine if advice is safe and suitable for their own situation. This article may contain affiliate links. If you click on one of the affiliate links, The Dollar Stretcher could be compensated.